[MStiers]

I have a 29gal salt tank with approximately 30lbs of LR, 2 Blue Hermit, 1 Red Hermit, a small chocolate chip starfish, 2 turbo snails and a single small Blue Damsel. I have a single actnic blue bulb and a natural sunlight bulb on this tank. It has been up for over a year and its' inhabitants are doing very well. BUT, I want to encourage the growth of coraline, polyps(sp?) and other good algea. At this point I add nothing to my water changes except the Oceanic Salt Mix and dechlorinator. The last two water changes have been with the pre mixed water with beneficial inhabitants(yeah right lol) that you can add right in the tank. I have read too many posts were people are getting bashed for using filtered tap water which is what I've used since day one. Thank for any help.

 

[Brendan]

whish i could help sounds like u know what your doing

 

[-=BOB=-]

how old is that aquarium, what equipment do you use and what are your water params.?

Well, I do not agree that tap water is perfect to use, but than again if all water purification demands are met it can not do to much harm..
Your light is kinda weak...
water needs to be pure... 30 gals is fairly small and can not imagine that there are skimm, sump calc reactor, bag of active carbon and other nice things that can help to keep that small amount of sea water clean and stable..
-unpolluted sea water, it would be great to get nitrates around 0.15
-there should be corallinae source on LR..
-calcium at 450-500 kh also high lets say 12
than you need to wait, wait, wait..it could be helpful if one can leave corallinae on glass to grow for some time and than to scrub it with the razor in the tank....
I believe you came across all that already...

 

[TommyBlaze]

Whats the purpose of scraping the coralin algae in the tank?

 

[MStiers]

My tank has been up for almost 1 year. I removed the powerhead as it was too strong and will be buying a smaller one Saturday as well as pricing a small skimmer. Currently for filtration I use a Fluval 304 with biomax ceramic rings in each basket. My tank parameters are:
Salinity: 1.020
Temp: 78 deg F
PH: 8.2
Nitrates: 1.5ppm at last water change
Changes are made every 3-4 weeks.

 

[-=BOB=-]

Whats the purpose of scraping the coralin algae in the tank?

to spread around the tank and eventually to end up over different places on the rocks where they supposed to grow further...basicly same reason why you don't want to blow cyanobacteria with powerhead but to siphon it instead.....

Salinity: 1.020

thats about the minimum, you might wanna pump it up not as much for corallinae as for the inverts (hermits, starfishes, snails..) 1.025 would be great..

 

[TommyBlaze]

ty bob

 

[cruzeoc]

well light needs to be boosted and scrapping the coralina algue is a very good way also add more hermits because the scrape it for you and cause it to spread